tarting up a bathroom

panny300

i am fitting a second hand bathroom suite for my ex wife (she is on invalidity benefit) the bathroom is half tiled in old fashioned tiles.
anyone know of a cheapish way to make it look half decent,does tile paint work in real life (not the tv world of diy) or does it scrape and chip off in use,are there any cost effective tile boards out there,i know i could tile over the tiles but i have a limit on what i will do for an ex wife.

Doozergirl

Tile paint doesn't work. It's just too high-use an area. It looks rubbish for a start and yes, it peels too. God knows how many times I've done it and it still looks rubbish. Better than it did a few years back, but still rubbish!

I know nothing about tile boards but you can get relatively cheap mosaic sheets that go on quicker than smaller tiles and it's easy to tile over what's already there.

panny300

that was quick doozergirl,what do you call cheap and how large are the sheets,i really don't want to retile if i can help it,hopeing to find something she can manage.

gabyjane

Hi i did our bathrom with yacht gloss! I know it sounds odd but weve lived here 2 and a bit years and its only just starting to discolour now. We had awful dark green tiles and i re did them white, they look 10 times better imo, although if it was my own home i would have re tiled it. This is very hard wearing and obviously more hard wearing than normal paint.

rizla155

If you rake out the old grout and replace it with new, its amazing the difference it makes in appearance. I would guess from your description that the tiles are bedded on a cement plinth, this was the common method of tiling in the late 20s up until the 50s. Its an abolute nightmare to remove this plinth unless you have acess to a Kango hammer and even that is hard graft. Try regrouting and tell her that you've been out and bought some antique tiles.

Craftyscholar

Doozergirl wrote: »

Tile paint doesn't work. It's just too high-use an area. It looks rubbish for a start and yes, it peels too. God knows how many times I've done it and it still looks rubbish. Better than it did a few years back, but still rubbish!

I know nothing about tile boards but you can get relatively cheap mosaic sheets that go on quicker than smaller tiles and it's easy to tile over what's already there.

BTDT got the proverbial!

Mine has lasted fairly well, but is peeling where the over-bath shower screen catches it.
However since I don't fancy trying to remove all the paint (small bathroom but all walls tiled) I suppose I'm stuck with retouching the paint.